But I find it nice just to sit back and reminisce. Reminiscing is pretty much just putting all the memories you’ ve made over your lifetime to good use.
I believe that there are four kinds of memories. There are happy memories, sad memories, bad memories, and functional memories.
Happy memories are the ones about falling in love, good camping trips, that time you won the lottery, events like that. I will skip over sad and bad memories because they are not beneficial to good reminiscing. Functional memories are necessary for life itself. Functional memories are everyday things, like your wife’ s birthday, and when to do an oil change, and paying the electric bill. Sometimes, I functionally reminisce standing in the kitchen, about what it was that I came in there for.
Memory is a wonderful thing. I read where Sherlock Holmes constructed a“ memory palace” in his mind. It was a place of multiple rooms where he could organize and store his thoughts and memories. And then by visiting the palace he could go to a particular room and retrieve a selected memory.
I attempted something similar one time but the best I could muster was a rusting, lop-sided, singlewide trailer, where I would periodically dump piles of random Kodachrome slides and some disorganized, undecipherable notebooks. A bad feature of this system is the irretrievability of any specific thing in a timely manner. However, even if I consciously cancel the request for said information, the task lives on in my subconscious.
Then, in the deep of night or in the middle of an unrelated conversation, the word, the name, the thought I had previously wanted, forces itself into my awareness in the spirit of“ better late than never.” I find this to be annoying and relieving at the same time. I’ m totally miffed at not being able to recall the information immediately but relieved to get it at all. But even this has its upside.
That is the unbidden appearance of random thoughts and memories, sometimes even a philosophical question that you sidelined a long time ago. One of those thoughts came up just the other day. For some reason or another I wanted to know how old Abe Martin is, but I couldn’ t remember or work out the math.
I recalled memories( happy) of his One Hundredth Birthday celebration. It was held at the Brown County Inn. I remember it because I was in a group back then called“ The Lost Shoe String Band” and we got invited to play for the soiree( that’ s wingding, for some of you). That was back in the spring of 2004.
There was a whole passel of Brown County friends and characters attending and performing. My friend Slats Klug was there along with Robbie Bowden and John Franz. They are gone, but they live on in my memories. I guess there is one more sort of memory: bittersweet.
So come on down to beautiful Brown County and make some memories before you get too old and forgetful.
Oh, I never did remember why I wanted to know how old Abe Martin is. •
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Nov./ Dec. 2026 • Our Brown County 35